Mae Hong Son

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Mae Hong Son was a mistake. It was the only place on the whole of my trip that I really just didn't take to.

The arrival at the bus station and the subsequent walk through the town wasn't very inspiring but when I checked into a good, cheap guesthouse next to a pleasant looking lake with a good view of Mae Hong Son's main wat, things started looking up.

Further exploration of the town revealed that it was all pretty much as dull and dirty as I initially feared, and that the town's inhabitants were really not very friendly. I just didn't feel very welcome.

The only real reason for visiting Mae Hong Son is a controversial one - to visit the nearby Karen tribes originally from Bhurma and commonly referred to as the "long neck tribe" and the "big ear tribe" due to their self mutilating body adornments. I hadn't completely convinced myself that I wanted to join the tourist masses by going to gawp at these people but I went around the local agencies investigating tour prices.

I soon discovered that any such trip was going to be hugely expensive because, being the low season, there were very few tourists interested and instead of lowering their prices accordingly, the tour operators had hiked up their prices to compensate. Furthermore they weren't prepared to negotiate even after I talked one guy through his costs of running the trip, thus revealing the huge profit he was making per person. Unless another 4 or 5 people signed up for a tour it was well outside of my budget.

Given that I wasn't fully convinced about visiting the tribes in the first place I decided to give it a miss. And given that the town had nothing else to offer (even the night market was disappointing) I decided to move on the very next morning after I arrived.

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